


Career exploration and associated first aid techniques

by twofrontteethstillcrooked



Series: Star Wars snippetfic [5]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Buddies bein' buddies, Extremely small amounts of blood, M/M, mild h/c, snippetfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 05:14:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11776236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/pseuds/twofrontteethstillcrooked
Summary: Poe turned on the faucet to rinse dermaseal off his own fingers. "What's the General said?""She thinks I have a lot of potential, which is fine. I like training cadets. Hell, I like leading cadets. I will love bringing down the FO. But the thought of doing it -- this, military -- the rest of my days? It makes me want to lie down in a blizzard and never get up again."~ ~ ~A soft little gift foryet_intrepid.





	Career exploration and associated first aid techniques

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yet_intrepid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/gifts).



> Uh. Almost all fic is AU by its very definition, but this post-TFA/pre-TLJ snippet is...probably more AU than it was earlier in the week. (Whoops?)

~ ~ ~

"Did you ever want to be anything other than a pilot?"

Poe considered this question for approximately zero-point-two seconds. "Nope. Why are you bleeding all over my 'fresher?"

"Seriously, man? You never thought about learning another trade, even a complimentary one? Like, quantum mechanics, or engineering? Cartography? Astronomy? Anything?" Finn was asking these questions to the bottom drawer where Poe kept ointments, extra toothpaste, and old washcloths, but Poe responded anyway.

"I like flying. I'm good at it. I wanted to help people, and being a pilot is not necessarily a direct line to that, ergo going through all the soldier hoopla at Starfleet -- and you've heard me talk about my parents, I was probably gonna end up at Starfleet regardless, but flying's the thing. Your turn."

"Shucking." Finn said it like a foul word; it took Poe a moment to realize Finn hadn't, in fact, cursed.

Poe leaned against the doorframe. "Do I want to know what you were shucking? Or why?"

Finn stood up triumphantly, holding a package of alco swabs and a bottle of dermaseal in the hand that wasn't dripping bright blood droplets onto the floor Poe had specifically steamed his very self not 12 hours ago. The new and unfortunate droid shortage was apparently going to impact every aspect of his life, it seemed.

"Oysters," Finn said. His expression changed to thoughtful. "Are there other things people shuck?"

"Corn. Doesn't usually cause bodily harm."

"Wouldn't use a knife for that." Finn sat the supplies on the sink edge. "Or would you?"

"Probably not." Poe noticed pink water puddled at the sink's drain. "You've already washed your hands?" He soaped up and rinsed off.

Finn nodded and sniffed. "Your soap smells like those oil baths BB-8 likes."

"Huh. It does." Poe'd never noticed before, even though he had personally performed a far larger than average number of oil baths in the last three weeks. The days were starting to run together, which was not the best sign. "Probably the same manufacturer." He squinted at Finn's hand in his. "This is gonna sting, sorry." 

The nonchalantness with which Finn had, well, handed over his wounded hand -- plus the casual way he knew where everything in the 'fresher was, not to mention the passcode to get in in the first place, the complete lack of surprise at Poe's presence and the full assumption Poe would be willing to help out as substitute med-droid -- all conspired to press the oddest sort of weight between Poe's shoulder blades. He cleared his throat silently and decided he was resolved not to think about any of those things again for a good long while.

The divot in the pad of Finn's left ring finger was deep and shaped unnervingly like the tip of an oyster knife, which Poe had never once considered was a knife sharp enough to cut with. (Shucking, as far as he knew, was more a prying-open endeavor.) The wound was unlikely to scab over for awhile without help. The alco would disinfect, the dermaseal would seal, and Finn would live to see another day as a…mess hall volunteer?

"I've decided I can rule out professional gambling as a long-term career path," Finn said, wincing. He had bumped Poe up against the wall and Poe clamped down on his wrist to keep him still while squeezing dermaseal carefully over the wound Finn had instinctively known to pinch shut for the procedure. 

...Though procedure was probably overstating it. It felt to Poe like they were performing high-stakes surgery. The 'fresher was very warm, or maybe it was just him. Still: teamwork!

"Yeah, thought I heard last night's 5-card rokep tournament went interestingly," he said.

Finn snorted. "Bastian is a menace."

"Warned you. Pilots have a knack for finding the right opening."

"Sneak attack, you mean."

"You lost a bet and ended up on kitchen duty." Poe leaned over, grabbed a washcloth from the drawer, and curled it around Finn's wet hand. The dermaseal would take a minute to set. "Then what?"

Finn shrugged. "I shucked, like, seventeen zillion oysters so the upstanding local troops could have dinner and endured about 90 dirty jokes from the rest of the mess staff in the process. Even the AI that runs the freezers knew dirty jokes," he marveled.

"Sounds accurate." Poe squeezed the injured finger gently, noting the seal seemed to be holding. "Knife slipped?"

"Got distracted." Finn frowned down at his finger. "Pretty sure I didn't unearth some heretofore hidden culinary genius deep within my soul, either." His tone had shifted from lighthearted to frustrated. "So that's no to gambling, no to becoming a chef. While we're at it, everything I've read about the investment sector sounds like gambling with fancier wardrobes and richer criminals; and if shucking oysters is heinous, growing and harvesting them to begin with sounds so much worse. As part time or temporary jobs, okay, they're gonna be better than sanitation. What isn't? Otherwise, count those out too. Does your dad like being a farmer?"

"Eh. He doesn't not like being a farmer. Being outside, working the land in good weather -- it suits him."

"Good weather, that's the kicker. Maybe I'm biased because of all those droughts and blizzards I had to survive as a kid, but outside never seems as appealing as inside."

"Hydroponics and hot houses?"

"Not feeling it."

"Teacher, lawyer, painter, furniture maker? Politician? Beer baron? Tailor, librarian, sketch artist, starship designer?"

Finn shook his head at each suggestion, a rueful turn to his mouth.

"Are current events filling you with any feelings about medical science?"

"Only that I wish I hadn't accidentally stabbed myself with an implement otherwise too dull to slice warm butter."

"You are the smartest person I've ever met--" and Poe noticed Finn's expression change whip-fast to proud, to bashful, and back to serious again, "--but you're not going to be brilliant at everything immediately. Cut yourself some slack."

"I literally cut myself, yes, thank you." 

Poe bit his lip to keep from grinning at that grouchy statement. 

Finn continued, "I've got a strategic mind and 'abundant fortitude in the face of adversity,' according to Statura. That's his polite way of saying the FO trained me to be the kind of officer soldiers would follow to their end, unless they beat me to death first for not really being 'one of the gang.'" 

Finn closed his eyes for a second, and Poe felt a rush of sorrow for him he had no clue what to do with. He loosened his grip on Finn's wrist and Finn pulled away, wiping off the last smear of alco before hanging the washcloth on the hook by the mirror. 

Poe turned on the faucet to rinse dermaseal off his own fingers. "What's the General said?" 

"She thinks I have a lot of potential, which is fine. I like training cadets. Hell, I like leading cadets. I will love bringing down the FO. But the thought of doing it -- this, military -- the rest of my days? It makes me want to lie down in a blizzard and never get up again."

"There's no rush about choosing a career." He didn't want to add, Since we're going to be at war for a long time; Finn knew that anyway. "There's also no harm in choosing one thing for awhile and choosing something else another time. People change, situations change. Life goes on, etc."

"Yeah." Finn was staring at his doctored finger. After a second he noticed the carnage on the floor and grabbed the washcloth back, quickly wiping up the blood neither he nor Poe, miraculously, had managed to step in.

"Laundry," Poe said, and Finn tossed the washcloth into the bucket on the other side of the toilet. "Want something for the pain? There's some generic comaren in the drawer down there."

"Nah," Finn said, waving around his newly non-leaking hand. "This is nothing compared to a lightsaber burn or even that time Tas tried to teach me moopsball."

"Told you that was a bad idea."

"It was a fantastic idea until I was unconscious there for a while."

"The best ideas often are." 

Poe went out of the 'fresher and poured himself a glass of water, and another for Finn. They sat down on the floor between Poe's bed and his tiny desk. The space was snug, somewhat pathetically more comfortable than the desk chair (with its broken wheel that gave it an unnerving tilt) or the bed (with its Rebellion-era mattress that rolled a sleeper into place).

"I also get that I'm the one who told everyone I wanted to help here any way I could. I'm not complaining about the assignments, voluntary or otherwise," Finn said, picking up his line of thought from a minute ago. He took a long drink and hiccupped once.

"No, I know." A cold swallow of water later Poe shivered and decided to make use of the increasingly-threadbare blanket off his bed. Dragging it down and tucking himself under it, while letting Finn have half, provided a brief lull in the conversation.

When he was satisfied with the companionable cocoon they'd created, Poe said, "So, this is me using my non-patronizing voice."

Finn narrowed his eyes at him. "Uh huh."

Poe smiled, but in sympathy. "You seem to have, of late, become very preoccupied with the future."

Finn sighed. "We're going to win this thing, and how'm I going to make a living afterwards? You'll still be a pilot. Rey will still be a Jedi. And there'll be a long recovery period, post-war: reconciliations, unification, rebuilding, all that. Plenty of work to be had. I know I don't have to decide tonight what I'd like to do, or study to do, or apprentice in, or whatever. 

"It's just, the more people I meet, the more it seems like a lot of you always knew what you wanted to do -- who you wanted to be, or at least the _kind_ of person you wanted to be. And ta-daa, you became that person, and here you are, brave and true." He bumped his elbow against Poe's. "I know it wasn't that simple. It just feels like it sometimes." He sighed again, an exaggerated huff. "Or maybe I'm just going stir-crazy since we've been in lock-down mode for 23 days." He shook his head and studied the water left in his glass.

Poe leaned toward him just a little. "I think you already know how to be the kind of person you want to be," he said, voice quiet. "You've proven that more than once. Everything else will fall into place when it needs to."

Finn looked at him. "Sounds okay when you say it."

"And you're not going to be alone." Poe didn't often poke at a person's most tender spots; he tried hard to be kinder than that. But he needed to say it, and hoped Finn would understand why. He watched him take a breath too shaky to be completely concealed and took a shaky breath of his own. He let the comment rest between them. 

Then he said, "If nothing else, Bastian truly is gonna follow you to the end of the galaxy, 'cause now he knows you're an easy mark."

That punched a laugh out of Finn, the sound of which made something lift in Poe's lungs.

"Yeah. But you're gonna help me get my sweet revenge," Finn said, all sly and already reaching up onto Poe's bedside shelf to knock down the one scraggly pack of rokep cards Poe'd kept from his first season on Hosnian Prime. The pack landed on the blanket. Finn hummed a happy note.

Poe took the cards out of their disintegrating box and started shuffling them. "I fear I neglected to teach you the controversial 'Chandrilan hold 'em' technique," he said, "and we're going to rectify that immediately."

Finn bounced and grabbed up the seven cards Poe dealt as soon as they left Poe's fingertips. Poe fanned out his own cards -- an unusually dreadful hand, though for the purposes of a lesson, useful. 

They studied their respective draws.

"I'd probably, you know. Follow you to the end of the galaxy too." Poe kept his eyes on his cards.

Finn looked up. There was a beat while he waited for Poe to look up as well. When Poe did, Finn smiled. "Yeah," he said softly. "I know."


End file.
